


Take Your Time If You Need It

by kaijuvenom



Category: Space Force (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Misunderstandings, Tony Pining Gayly, also Tony has OCD, because i am projecting, gay pining, if u will, jewish tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28211214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuvenom/pseuds/kaijuvenom
Summary: Tony has been in love with Dr. Chan Kaifang for months now, and he's been struggling to come up with a way to tell him. He doesn't even know if Chan likes men, so he tries performing all sorts of elaborate tasks to find out, instead of, as Angela stated it, "just fucking asking him, you repressed moron".But don't wait if you know you feel it, and you're ready to call this love
Relationships: Chan Kaifang/F. Tony Scarapiducci
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Take Your Time If You Need It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thestarsaretalking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsaretalking/gifts).



> Title is once again take from [a MIKA song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTPBU7gGX9c)  
> and its one of my fave songs EVER and its mlm (i mean it's by MIKA and hes gay so everything he does is mlm but its a mlm DUET, people) and everyone should listen to it ok *gets off my soapbox* enjoy fic <3  
> this ones for sam, who is, in general, god of chantony content

Tony had never had much luck when it came to love.

Maybe that was because people didn’t really like him.

Not as much as he liked them, anyway. 

He’d probably spent the equivalent of weeks or even months out of his life pining for people who wouldn’t give him a second glance, and he always told himself that  _ this will be the last time,  _ but then he moved somewhere new, he got another job, and he met someone that made him fall head over heels in love no matter how hard he tried to prevent it. 

The last thing Tony had wanted when he started working for Space Force was to fall in love with one of his coworkers, and thankfully, he’d started off pretty lucky. People working at Space Force tended to have that obnoxious, military persona coupled with a superiority complex of some sort. He hated them all, to be perfectly honest. 

Although Mallory was alright, he supposed, and in fact it was Mallory who ended up inadvertently introducing him to the person who would subsequently become the love of his life. Which was simultaneously a blessing and a curse, as Tony wasn’t quite sure where he stood on that matter yet.

The thing about Doctor Chan was that--well, there were a lot of things Tony could say about Doctor Chan. He was hilarious, he was brilliant, attractive, simultaneously sensitive and incredibly strong, and he seemed to mind Tony’s incessant pestering the least out of any of their coworkers.

Tony didn’t know when he’d started liking Chan romantically, maybe during their very first meeting, but he definitely knew when he’d fallen in love. They’d struck up a friendship after Mallory, who had invited Tony to have lunch with him and Chan, had been called off for an emergency and left the two of them alone for the rest of their lunch break. Ever since then, Tony had started coming up with excuses to spend more time with him, usually saying it was for his job, that it was important for the public to see what Chan’s job was, why astrobotany was so important and definitely worth all the government spending on lab rats and hairy plants. 

Then it started becoming nothing but, ‘well, you’re my friend, I like spending time with you’. They had a good friendship, and Tony could mostly ignore the fact that he had a crush. He liked having Chan as a friend, and he didn’t often get friends in real life. 

Things went south when Chan decided to make one sweet little gesture and Tony couldn’t get the soft smile on Chan’s face when he’d said  _ we did great,  _ and carefully handed him a piece of cheesecake on a toothpick, and their fingers had brushed together for a millisecond, out of his brain.

That was the moment he realized he was in love.

And the moment it became what Tony would categorize as a problem. 

Not that being in love was a problem, Tony wasn’t  _ that  _ cynical, but he tended to have an annoying habit of falling in love with friends. Any time someone graced him with enough courtesy and kindness to be categorized as a friend immediately became important to him, because it was so rare it happened. And that importance always seemed to manifest itself romantically. 

Sometimes he wished it wouldn’t, and now was one of those times, because Chan was his first, and really  _ only  _ friend at Space Force, and he didn’t want to risk losing him. He'd rather have Chan as a friend and nothing more than make things weird between them by confessing feelings that he wished he didn’t have. 

For all he knew, Chan was straight anyway. 

And speaking of Chan’s sexuality, which Tony knew he could simply  _ ask,  _ but that would be too straightforward and simple for someone like him? So of course he didn’t do it, and instead conducted an elaborate investigation. 

Points to hypothesize Chan as straight: The only time he had ever mentioned a romantic partner had been a college girlfriend. 

Points to hypothesize Chan as gay or bisexual: The only time he had ever mentioned a romantic partner had been a college girlfriend. 

And this elaborate investigation led nowhere. 

Tony would subtly search his office for rainbow paraphernalia of any kind, but Chan kept his office fairly impersonal to begin with. He hadn’t been working at Space Force very long at all, an even shorter amount of time than Tony had, so perhaps that was why, but either way,  _ that  _ investigation also led nowhere. 

Unlike Chan, Tony would often tell tales of past partners, whatever gender they may have been, and Chan’s reactions to the stories, no matter what the gender of Tony’s ex had been, never seemed to vary. Which, again, was inconclusive.

As Angela repeatedly told him, he should just  _ fucking ask  _ or she would ask him herself, but Tony would continuously insist that she didn’t need to involve herself. It was a matter of pride, now. 

And  _ speaking  _ of pride, that was Tony’s next idea. 

He invited Chan to Pride in Denver that June, and they’d gone together, and Chan had bought Tony a rainbow flag to wear as a cape and he’d gotten rainbow face paint at a booth, but that didn’t  _ mean  _ anything, did it? He could just be an ally. So it was still inconclusive. 

Angela disagreed with him on that point, because apparently she thought that the selfie Chan and Tony had taken together during Pride where Chan had stood on his tiptoes to kiss Tony on the cheek right before he took the picture had been an ‘obvious sign’, and that Tony was being willfully ignorant because he was irrationally afraid of rejection, but he chose to ignore those points and carry on with his (highly necessary) investigation. 

He was beginning to run out of ideas to find out whether or not Chan was gay. Yes, he had started wearing the little rainbow enamel pin that Tony had bought for him at Pride every day to work, and yes he didn’t hesitate to initiate physical contact and do things such as hug him every morning and often kiss his cheek, but that didn’t  _ mean  _ anything. He was a  _ friend.  _

That was what  _ friends  _ did. Tony had given him a gift, Chan had shown his appreciation, and he initiated physical contact to demonstrate he was comfortable around Tony, and that was all. It didn’t mean anything else. 

Despite Angela’s beliefs to the contrary. 

The next idea Tony had was a brilliant one, and it was totally his idea, and it was not at all brought about by Angela threatening to tell Chan that Tony had a crush on him just because she was sick of hearing his pining. She insisted that they’d been  _ gay courting  _ for months now, and Tony had been forced to remind her of the time she’d fallen in love with the saleswoman at Kohl’s and spent hours of her days looking hopelessly lost in the shoe section just to see if she would come over to help. 

Angela still thought Tony was dumber, but Tony disagreed on that point. But anyway, Tony was going to ask Chan if he was gay. He was just going to do it, and that was that. He was going to do it  _ today.  _

“Dr. Chan,” Tony said as he jumped up from his table so quickly he nearly dropped his phone and gave him an excited wave that didn’t fit with his formal greeting. 

“Morning, Tony.” Chan stepped toward him and stood on his toes to give Tony a kiss on the cheek before sitting down across from him, setting his coffee on the table. 

Tony felt his cheeks grow warm and he had the sudden urge to run his fingers across the spot on his skin Chan had kissed, but he resisted, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he put way more thought into Chan’s affections than even Chan did, and sat back down. He tapped his fingers across the table, counting slowly. 

They didn’t say anything for a moment, Chan seemed to be watching Tony’s fingers move, and he wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but he seemed to be waiting for Tony to finish tapping his fingers before speaking. It had to be a coincidence, but as soon as Tony had finished silently counting the taps and his hand stilled, Chan spoke.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said, tilting his head as he waited for Tony’s acknowledgement, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Go ahead. Of course.” Tony blinked, inwardly cringing at the fact that he’d said the same thing four times. 

“How would you feel about getting away for the weekend?” Chan asked, and before Tony could even say,  _ I’m sorry, what? What the fuck? Huh?  _ Or something of that nature, Chan had continued hastily, almost like he was nervous. “I know it’s kind of early, and if you don’t want to, I don’t want to pressure you-”

“Wait, wait, wait, Chan,  _ what?  _ Early? Early in what?” Clearly, Tony had missed something here. Maybe he’d entered an alternate reality halfway through a conversation and hadn’t noticed it.

“Early… in our relationship,” Chan said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

_ “What?”  _ He was definitely in an alternate universe. Vaguely, he wondered what else was different about this universe. Maybe Alternate Tony had an iPhone 11. Or more Twitter followers.

“What?” Chan echoed Tony’s response, and now seemed just as confused as he was. “I only meant that--well, that we haven’t been dating long, and I know we haven’t really talked about it, but you seem to be taking things slow, so I thought I’d ask before springing it on you as a surprise and making you feel obligated, and-- was that the wrong thing to do? Should I have surprised you? Or not suggested it at all? Am I bad at this?”

“Chan…” Tony began, after several seconds of silence. “I’m going to be totally honest with you here.” He paused, wondering if simply saying  _ what the fuck,  _ was perhaps too honest. He decided it was. “I think  _ I’m  _ the one who’s bad at this,” he said, avoiding Chan’s eyes as he spoke. “Because, um, this is the first I’m hearing that we’re… that you and I... are dating.”

If there was anything Tony had been expecting Chan’s reaction to be (varying anywhere from abject horror to a coffee thrown in his face) he hadn’t expected tears of laughter. Although, he really should have. From an outsider’s point of view, this could be funny. And apparently, from Chan’s point of view, it was hilarious. 

After trying to catch his breath several times and failing every time he looked back up at Tony (because apparently his bemused expression was hilarious as well), Chan finally managed to stop laughing, biting the side of his lip as he lifted his glasses slightly to wipe his eyes. 

“Holy shit,” Chan muttered, and another laugh escaped him. “How do you somehow always know what to say to make me laugh? Do you have, like, an app for that? A Chan laughter app? ‘Guaranteed to Make Dr. Chan Laugh’, only 4.99 with ads?”

He’d thought it was a joke. He’d thought Tony was joking when he’d said he didn’t know they were dating.  _ Dear G*d,  _ he thought briefly,  _ I know I haven’t been to temple since I moved out of my parents’ house, but please give me the strength to get through this without losing a friendship and a boyfriend I didn’t even know I had.  _

“Chan, um-” he paused, swallowing. “I’m serious. I’ve been in love with you for months, and I’ve been trying to come up with a way to ask you out, but I seriously, genuinely, am not joking when I tell you I was not aware we were already… going out.”

If they’d been in a cartoon, crickets would’ve started chirping at that moment. 

Chan blinked at him, and Tony blinked back (maybe they were communicating in Morse Code, although neither of them knew Morse Code). 

“I thought…” Chan began, a look of confusion growing on his face. “So when you took me to Pride…” He frowned, raising a finger and drawing a line in the air like he was connecting the dots only he could see. “Oh.  _ Oh.”  _

Another cricket-chirp worthy silence. 

“That’s it?  _ Oh?”  _ Tony asked, and he’d been hoping for more, because honestly, he didn’t know what to say, so he was hoping Chan did.

“So I shouldn’t book that weekend getaway, then.”

“I mean…” Tony started, looking away as he felt a blush spread across his face again. “Maybe move it back a few months?”

“You’re an idiot,” Chan breathed, as if he were just realizing this, which Tony really felt was something he should’ve been fully aware of already. 

“I mean, yeah. I thought Rod Sterling and Vincent Price were the same person. This has been established.”

“I’m in love with an absolute moron.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, I mean- you’re in  _ love  _ with me?” Tony had been about to go off on a speech about something stupid as fuck he’d probably done earlier that day, but he was immediately distracted by what Chan had actually said sinking in. He was  _ in love  _ with Tony. And Tony was in love with him. And for some reason, they hadn’t kissed yet. Which was a travesty Tony hoped to mend as soon as possible. “Would you mind if we blew off work today?” He asked, still rather in shock from the Everything that had just happened. 

“Not at all. I’ll tell Mallory you have chicken pox.”

“I mean… I would prefer you didn’t? Maybe something a little less, um, humiliating-  _ oh!”  _ That last bit had been due to Chan grabbing his tie as they walked out of the building together, pulling him down to eye level. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asked, and between the question itself, the way Chan’s fingers twisted into his tie, and the look on his face, Tony felt he might spontaneously combust, and he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to speak, so he just nodded quickly, wrapping his arms around Chan’s waist.

**Author's Note:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/kaijuvenom)   
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> 


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